Barely

Sterling is FINISHED with FINALS!!! I am so so so so so incredibly excited! It makes the entire world a rosier place. Here is what his first weekend out of school was like:

I was in charge of keeping my sister's house in order. It happened, barely. She is in Guatemala with her two oldest, my niece Danica and my nephew Myles. The medical bags she took with her were HUGE, just ask Sterling, he hauled them into her suburban.  So we sent them on their way, and then Sterling went with my niece Lynnaea and my babe Will to get some grub for dinner. While they were gone everyone was happily playing outside, and when we came in, I sat on the couch to listen to my nephew Anders' super long rendition of something that happened at the school playground that day (I had asked him about school because I had dropped them off that morning during piano lessons because they missed the bus. Their clock was off. Which reminds me of how crazy the morning was too. Anyway.) Sometime through his story I decided we'd better go check on Devaney and Ruthie because they'd been gone a minute playing in Devaney's room. I told Anders to see what they were up to. He came walking slowly back in, slapped his hand to his forehead and said "We're idiots." Yup, that about sums it up.

 I went into the room and somehow they'd found a gigantic container of vaseline and smeared it....everywhere. Devaney had it covering her head in huge gobs, around the carpet she was sitting on in even bigger gobs, and trailing through an entire pile of puzzle pieces. Not to mention they had a bottle of isopropyl alcohol partly drained into the carpet as well. Anders, being a big grown-up kid of what, seven?, (I always think of him as three.) stripped Devaney down for me and stuck her in the tub while I wiped off the little bit on Ruthie and took a paper towel and slid the biggest gobs off the carpet. I scrubbed, for an hour and a half. I used dish soap on the carpet, let it dry for a little, and scrubbed some more because that's what google said to do. It got a lot better but let me tell ya, vaseline has got to be the WORST thing I have ever experienced trying to clean. It doesn't clean. It is like a hungry glop-monster that digs itself into the carpet and will NOT come out. I had to wash my hands in between scrubbing because my fingers would be so coated with vaseline that I couldn't tell if it was on the carpet or my hand. Pretty much, it was horrible. We washed Devaney's hair over six times. Three times with dish soap, but to no avail. She was quite the grease-ball. I kept thinking of Anders and his "We're idiots." Sterling fed all the kids and did dishes without bothering my scrubbing once, which says a lot for my mood at that point. Ahem.

That night Will had a stuffy nose, but he seemed to be doing all right, and true to his angelic form he slept all the way through the night. But when he woke up to nurse in the early morning, his breathing sounded worse. Luckily, the nice man at the hospital had said not to return our nose-sucker for a LONG TIME, just in case. Unluckily, it was at our house in Ogden. So the gallant Sterling rode off at 5am (with Ruth who had been woken up during the commotion, but went back to sleep for the entire drive) and drove back to Ogden to get the nose-sucker. We pulled out some whoppers from his nose when they got back, and I think we ALL breathed a little easier.

With that early start to the morning, we decided to make baking powder biscuits, bacon, and eggs and Sterling had a beautiful gourmet first breakfast after finals!!!! He is amazing, and cooked a lot of it himself since I had to nurse the baby. Funny thing, I was rolling out the biscuits and Anders had just woken up and walked into the kitchen. He picked up a water bottle off the island and went to drink it, only someone had left the lid unscrewed, so the entire thing came off and dumped all the water over him. His face was priceless. What a way to wake up! The rest of the day was much more uneventful, until I came home to Ogden early because Jared came home, and forgot all our church clothes because Sterling had hung them up in the closet and I hadn't noticed. Oh well, we wore different clothes and we'll probably be back to Morgan soon enough to pick them up. And that, is the story of how I BARELY held Megan's house together for the two days we were there.

Thank you Sterling, for spending your first free weekend taking care of kids while I scrubbed, and waking up at 5am to get the suction machine! You are my hero!